by Marc Cameron
“It is uploaded.”
“No problems?” Ryan asked.
“No problems.”
Ryan dialed the number to Foley’s prepaid burner phone on the mobile Yazdani had given him.
“Is this the person who called about the pizza?”
His use of the word “person” conveyed that the malware had been uploaded. Reference to a “lady” would have meant it had not happened.
“Now I will go get my son,” Yazdani said. “And you will keep your end of the bargain.”
“Absolutely,” Ryan said. “Go get him. I need to wait for word that the missiles have been destroyed.”
“That was not our agreement,” Yazdani said. “You are to help us get across.”
“And we will,” Ryan said. “As soon as I hear back.”
“And what if something goes wrong?” Yazdani said, eyes flashing. “Is your promise to my son only binding if your aircraft hits the target?”
“No,” Jack said. “But plans will change. If we have to, you can meet my contacts south of Islam Qala and they will see to it you both get across.”
Yazdani spat something in Persian and sped off.
“What did he say?”
“You do not want to know,” Ysabel said. “But it has to do with your balls and a very hot fire.”
“Shit,” Ryan said. “That’s kind of harsh.”
“It’s not very ladylike,” Ysabel said, “but I have to admit that I thought it many times myself over the years while I was waiting for you to call.”
* * *
—
“Raptors heading west, Mr. President,” the chairman of the joint chiefs said. “At roughly Mach 1.8 they’ll be over target in eight minutes.”
Bob Burgess clenched both fists and set them on the table. “With any luck at all, the stealth tech and the asset’s malware will make the birds completely invisible.”
“These are two of the best pilots in two of the most advanced airplanes in the world,” General Paul said.
“What about Russian Verba or other man-portable antiaircraft defense systems?” Mary Pat asked.
“They would have to know we’re there,” General Paul said. “Honestly, with the F-22 I doubt we even needed the malware to blind their system. I think we’re good.”
The chairman nodded to his aide, who pulled up the pilot’s frequency. There was momentary static and then the pilots’ chatter came across crystal clear over the speakers in the Situation Room.
“Twenty miles . . .” Haymaker One, the flight leader, said. “Commence run in thirty seconds on my mark.”
“Roger that,” the second pilot said. “Thirty seconds.”
“Mark,” the flight lead said.
“Roger.”
General Paul filled in the blanks as the Raptor pilots prepared to drop their ordnance. The assets in Iran—the general had no idea who they were—had provided GPS coordinates for the Russian missiles, giving the JDAMs a positive target to home in on once they were launched from thirty-five thousand feet. With a circular error probable of less than five meters, the four thousand-pound JDAMs would make short work of both Gorgons and anyone who happened to be standing within the blast radius. The Raptors would get close enough to video the attack from a safe altitude with sophisticated onboard sensors and cameras, allowing for a Bomb Damage Assessment, or BDA, in real time before they egressed back across the border to Afghanistan.
“Haymaker One, bombs away,” the flight lead said.
“Haymaker Two, bombs away.”
Eighty seconds ticked by and the flight leader spoke again.
“Only getting one secondary explosion,” he said. “I repeat. Only one secondary. We plastered the target. The second missile must be in a different location.”
General Paul looked at Ryan, who twirled his index finger in the air.
“Get them out of there,” Ryan said.
63
Midshipman Hardy went to Idaho State for two years before he followed through on a dream and gained acceptance to Annapolis. He was considerably older than most midshipmen in his class, but still, being driven up to the side entrance of the White House and ushered past security was enough to make him feel like an excited schoolkid on a field trip to the Smithsonian. Special Agent Marsh waited for the barricades at the northeast gate to the White House to come down. An officer with the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service was expecting them, and waved the Crown Victoria through when Marsh held up the credential card hanging from the lanyard around his neck. Marsh handed both Van Orden and Marsh lanyards of their own, each bearing a badge with a red A, signifying they had an appointment but had to be escorted.
Marsh kept going past the main entrance, parking the sedan at the east end of the circular drive, and led the way down a long walk along what Hardy guessed was the press briefing room. There were no guards on the outside, but they were met by two more officers from the Secret Service Uniformed Division, one standing, another seated at a desk. A sign-in book lay open in front of this one, but Marsh pointed down the hall and the African American officer nodded her head and waved him through. “Hey, Cody,” she said. “Busy day.”
“You’re tellin’ me,” Marsh said.
Hardy had seen photographs of the White House, and plenty of movies and television shows like National Treasure and The West Wing—but he was most surprised at how low the ceilings were. Everyone from staffers to the Secret Service U.D. officers spoke in solemn tones. Rich carpeting and antique furniture gave it a reverent, museum quality, what seemed like a palace on film was much smaller, almost to the point of feeling cramped. Historic paintings by Terpning, Bierstadt, and Remington graced the walls. There were even some sketches by Norman Rockwell depicting a visit to the White House, but other than the official portraits of the President and the Vice President like the ones hanging in The Yard, there were none of the Commander in Chief himself.
Marsh turned left at the end of the hall, into a suite of offices crammed full of one too many desks where the President’s secretaries and body man sat. A severe-looking woman peered over the top of her glasses and then nodded at the Secret Service agent.
“Go on in, Cody,” she said. “He’s expecting you.”
“Thanks, Ms. Martin,” Marsh said. He stopped at the door and straightened his tie before leading the way into the Oval Office.
The President of the United States stood from his chair by the fireplace when Hardy and Van Orden stepped into the room. It too was smaller than Hardy imagined, but still big enough to bring more than a little awe. There were others in the room, the secretaries of defense and state, the director of the CIA, the chairman of the joint chiefs, and a couple of others Hardy did not recognize, including a woman who looked to be in her late fifties and sat nearest the President.
“Professor Van Orden,” Ryan said, stepping forward to extend his hand.
That is something, Hardy thought. The most powerful man on the planet and he crosses the room to shake our hands.
“And Midshipman Hardy,” Ryan said. “I’m sure you’re wondering what all this fuss is about.”
* * *
—
“So you two are my resident experts,” President Ryan said after Mary Pat brought the newcomers up to speed with a quick brief. “On the science at least. I want you both to speak freely. Give me your opinions as well as scientific facts—just make sure you make it clear which is which.” He heaved something between a groan and a sigh. “So tell me, how real is this threat proposed by Sahar Tabrizi? What are the odds?”
“If Iran is able to hit the correct satellite,” Van Orden said, “what Dr. Tabrizi calls ‘Crux,’ then the odds of a cascading effect are high. She is a gifted physicist. Her theories as well as Kessler’s are sound.”
“If I may, Mr. President,” the secretary of defense asked.
Ryan nodded.
“How quickly would this debris from Tabrizi’s Crux affect the remainder of our satellites in low earth orbit?”
Van Orden turned to Hardy.
“My father is a police officer,” the midshipman said, making Ryan like the kid even more. “His ballistic vest is made of Kevlar, but the steel shock plate over his heart and lungs is covered in material to prevent spalling. If a bullet were to hit a metal shock plate that was not coated and angled correctly, then spalling occurs. Metal fragments are sent flying off the plate and become just as deadly to my dad as the original projectile. Even a glancing missile strike on a satellite would create a great deal of debris. I’m sure you’ve all seen what a particle the size of a grain of sand can do to the window of the Space Station.”
Everyone in the room gave a solemn nod.
Van Orden took up the conversation. “There are almost eight hundred satellites in low earth orbit, including some for communications such as satellite telephones, ISR, and the International Space Station, and others. Some of them small cubes just a few inches across. Others weigh several tons and are the size of a bus.” He turned to Hardy, giving him the floor to continue.
“We track over eighty-five hundred bits of debris—space junk if you will—that are larger than ten centimeters. China used a kinetic kill vehicle to take out one of their own weather satellites in 2007, creating over two thousand pieces larger than a golf ball. Some estimates put the pieces of junk over two millimeters but too small to track at more than a million. To put that in perspective, a .22-caliber bullet is 5.56 millimeters. Space, even low earth orbit, is a very large place, but the odds of catastrophic damage rise exponentially.” Hardy paused, then said, “With each successive satellite creating more and more bits of debris, each traveling at seventeen thousand five hundred miles per hour, it wouldn’t take too many days to create a ring that would make low earth orbit a very unfriendly environment.”
Van Orden nodded in assent. “And that does not address what would occur when the orbit of that debris starts to decay. Much of it would burn up on reentry, but a significant portion would fall back to earth—right on top of us.”
Foley raised her fountain pen. “Since reentry would burn up many of the pieces, would not a nuclear detonation do the same thing?”
“A kinetic kill would be better if their aim is to create more debris,” the midshipman said.
Burgess said, “Then we have to assume they were just after the guidance system on the missiles. It wouldn’t be difficult to leave the warhead unarmed. PALs should render it incapable of detonation even during a direct, head-on engagement.”
A PAL, or permissive action link, was a security system designed to keep a nuclear device from blowing up except when positive actions were taken. As one nuclear weapons expert put it, “bypassing a PAL should be about as complex as performing a tonsillectomy while entering the patient from the wrong end.”
“So what do we do about a kinetic kill vehicle?” Arnie van Damm asked.
Hardy gave a solemn nod. “My friends and I worked through this,” he said. “You can move a satellite a couple of different ways. Some of them have solar antennas. We could deploy those and move the bird with solar radiation pressure—sort of like wind on a kite.”
“Too slow,” Van Orden said. “A missile with any guidance system at all would merely reacquire.”
“True,” Hardy said.
“Can’t you just move it?” Foley asked.
“You could,” Hardy said. “A lot of satellites require periodic boosts to maintain their orbit. We could boost its orbit to take it higher temporarily.”
“Just temporarily?” van Damm asked.
Hardy nodded. “That’s correct, sir.” Hardy and Van Orden began to talk between themselves, running numbers and scenarios.
Ryan interrupted. “But we can move it?”
“We can, Mr. President,” Van Orden said. He muttered what to Ryan sounded like strange incantations about pi and vis viva, and orbital decay, while preforming calculations in his head. He looked at his protégé. “A point-five-degree flight path change . . .”
Midshipman Hardy, who’d been working through the same mental calculations, finished the professor’s thought: “. . . would mean movement in tens of meters from the original location.”
“So,” Ryan said, “what you’re saying is, we put on the brakes and the missile flies right by?”
“What?” Van Orden said, missing the Top Gun reference.
Hardy nodded. “Essentially, yes, Mr. President. As long as the missile didn’t reacquire, then it would continue past, eventually falling back to earth.”
“Okay,” Ryan said. “Nuclear or kinetic, we still have a major problem. So let’s have it.”
“Pardon?” Van Orden said.
“Crux,” Ryan said. “The satellite Dr. Tabrizi talks about in her theory. We can’t move it until we know which one it is?”
Van Orden and Hardy looked at each other, then at the President.
The professor spoke first. “We believe there are five that would work,” he said.
Hardy added, “Maybe as many as nine. And that’s just talking about ours.”
64
Atash Yazdani was bouncing in place when Dovzhenko pulled into the parking lot near Akbar Children’s Hospital. His son Ibrahim stood beside him, looking small and drawn. Arm around the boy’s shoulders, the Iranian bent down and stuck his head in the Toyota’s window. He showed his teeth in the first smile since they’d met him.
“There has been an attack at the missile site west of the city,” he said. “Your plan has worked. The missiles are destroyed. You can now keep your end of the bargain and take my son out.”
His face fell when he noticed the mood in the truck. “What has happened?” He put a hand on top of his head and looked skyward. “Do not tell me there is yet another delay.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “But only one missile was destroyed. There is still one at large.”
“That does not matter anymore,” Yazdani said, almost in tears. “I have done what you asked. I can do no more.” He turned to his son. “Ibrahim, get in the truck. These people are taking us to get you medicine.”
“And we will,” Jack said. “You have my word—”
“Your word will get us all killed!”
The boy began to cough, hacking until his face turned red. Yazdani pounded on his back and he was finally able to gain control.
“We are still going to help,” Jack said again. “But we have to find that second missile.”
Yazdani stared daggers at him, then threw up his hands. “There are some caves approximately ten kilometers south of the test site. It is possible they took one of the erector launchers there.”
Dovzhenko passed him a map. “Show me on this.”
Yazdani pointed out a spot to the west of the city, on a narrow goat track of a road past the village of Noghondar. He took out a pen and drew an X. “The caves are here,” he said. “I know they are large enough, but that does not mean the missile is there.”
“We’ve got to try,” Ryan said, scrawling instructions on a scrap of paper. “Taybad is just a few kilometers from the Afghan border. Take your son and wait there. If you do not hear from us in four hours, then call this number.”
“I have no choice,” Yazdani said.
Ryan shrugged. “None of us do,” he said.
* * *
—
It seemed that virtually every military and militia vehicle was racing out of Mashhad toward the scene of explosions. Dovzhenko fell in with the parade, speeding west with the group. Ysabel translated the radio broadcasts as they drove.
The official stand was that Israel had fired a salvo of missiles at an Iranian school, killing hundreds of innocent children. That did not explain the massive secondary explosion some were rep
orting, but the media, accustomed to toeing the government line, made no attempt to explain much of anything.
“Turn here,” Ryan said, navigating while Dovzhenko drove.
The Russian left the convoy to head south into a wooded valley when they were close enough to see the glow of flames in the distance. A mile down the road he slowed and turned off his headlights, running on parking lights alone. Continuing toward Yazdani’s X, they were gratified to see the glow of bright construction lights in the distance.
“Way to go, Atash!” Ryan said. He rolled down his window, letting in the cool air of the mountain valley. “Hear that?”
“What?” Ysabel asked. “I hear the sound of a stream running along the road.”
“A generator,” Dovzhenko said. “I’ll go a little farther, then we should walk up.”
Ryan checked the AKs, consolidating all the ammo into four twenty-round magazines. Eighty rounds sounded like a lot—until you were getting shot at.
Dovzhenko parked in the trees, and they each slung a rifle, easing their doors shut to hide any noise of their approach. They crept forward on their hands and knees until they reached the edge of the clearing.
The stark construction lighting, powered by the humming generator, illuminated the area beyond the trees like a stage. A rocky mountain lay beyond the pool of light. The same gravel road on which they now walked led into a black hole in the side of the mountain, while a secondary road forked to the west, continuing down into a dry wadi and then over an adjacent hill. More light spilled from the interior of a squat stone building to the right of the cave.
Three uniformed guards were posted outside—one beside the building, two at the edge of the light nearer the cave entrance.
“I don’t like it,” Ysabel said. “We don’t know how many more are inside.”
“True,” Dovzhenko said. “We should watch for a—”
Jack put a hand on his arm to get his attention. “Look,” he said, a whisper.
Ysabel gasped. “Reza Kazem.”